To make up for making a sort of apm topic, I'm gonna write a guide on how to do the savior 3 hatch muta build aka the most amazing zvt build ever created. It's the only reason I win games zvt cuz i have like 150 apm lolz. At the same time I'm also switching to low eco zerg so people cant noob bash me after reading this. I added a TvZ section at the bottom.
I'm gonna assume the map is rush hour since i'm pretty sure its the map this build is intended for. Also this is vs fe only, but you should know that.
The essence of this build is timing, if your mutas or initial lurkers are a bit late, terran can come out when you're weak and rape eveything you have. Hive timing is very important too and comes with only practice, experience and reaction. What's advanced about this build is exactly and only the timing part. Once you have that down the rest comes easy. This build also requires very low multitasking and micro, it's mostly reaction and again, timing.
1. The Build Order
1.12 hatch, 11 pool, drone until 13/14 (13 = 6 lings, 14 = 4 lings) depending on your style, the terran, 10/12 rax or 11/13 rax, 1 rax or 2 rax. I usually go 4 lings, if terran is noob i build 2. The reason you might want to have 6 lings usually however is cuz you're trying to build your first creep colony as late as possible so your eco is as good as it can be.
3rd hatch when you have 300 minerals before lings, transfer drones. This is probably the most important note about this build, GET YOUR EXTRACTOR BY 18 AT THE VERY LASTEST , if you get it at 18, make damn sure to get it as soon as you have 50 min. On maps such as Arcadia with a min only, you can even gas as early as 16. Ovie at 16/17 or even 18 like nal_keke. I do 16 and so does midian so that's why you should probably do 16. Get your colony with your 18th drone if you want to be safe. But I recommend not getting colonies at all if possible. Eco is the most important.
note: the reason why gas timing is so important is cuz you want your mutas to come out as soon as possible, when looking at replays you want your mutas to come out by 7:20, if it comes out after and terran did nothing to slow you down, work on your timing. The reason why muta timing is so important is because you will be expoing earlier than usual, and you want to keep the time window of when terran can come out and kill your expo before lurkers to the minimum. With practice you should be able to expo safely 100% of the time vs equal level opponents.
2. Early Game
Get Lair as soon as you have 100 gas. Terran is either academying before cc or after. For before, you'll need to sunken up depending on when he comes out. Always have a ling in front of t's base, scout, blahblah. The formation of your sunkens is very important on rush hour, there's a thread on teamliquid that has pictures of good rush hour sunken formations. Find it if you're having trouble.
With your next 100 gas, get ling speed. This is very important as lings can contain the terran longer or completely before mutas on rh3. Power drones, power power power POWER power drones, use every larva as soon as it comes out. When your ling speed is almost done, terran is about ready to come out if he went 2 rax academy, it's earlier if he went 1 rax obv. Time it so you start making lings a little before ling speed is done, but this really varies by game, you should know when by feel, don't be mechanical about this. I usually make about a group or so, sometimes more sometimes less, the best amount is the most lings to harass effectively without sacrificing too much eco. If you make too many you won't have enough minerals for an expo and 7-9 mutas initially. If you lost your lings early game you'd need to make more, so don't lose them.
Now with your lings, seprate them into two groups, go to terran's base, one by each path. If terran is coming out already, defend with one group while sunkening, backstab with the other. If terran hasn't come out, contain and harass to keep him busy, just harass the most you can. Usually you need some lings to defend on rh3 to keep your nat gas. At this point, you should already have sent out a drone to the 3rd main, expo when it gets there. This is usually when your spire is spawning. Get your spire as soon as your lair is done, I can't stress enough how important timing is. Usually I get 2nd gas at 24, get it later if you want to expo earlier and/or build more lings. But in return you might not be able to get 9 mutas at the same time.
So at this point, terran either is going back or has never come out. If he doesn't go back, rape his little containing army with muta/ling. Time your ovies right so when your spire is done, you can get as many mutas as soon as possible, preferably 9 of course.
When your mutas are out, harass your ass off without losing any, use the ovie trick. Transfer some drones when the expo is almost up, very important thing is to get your 3rd extractor up as soon as you can, usually with the first drone from that expo. While your drones are transferring, lay down another hatch at the 2500 gas in between you and your 3rd expo. At this point rally all your hatcheries to the 2500 gas as terran will want to attack either that or the 3rd expo.
3. The Switch
This is the most important stage of this build, its also what makes this build brilliant. Lay down a den with your next 100 minerals after mutas are out, lurker when you have 200 gas, make sure you lay down your den as soon as you can after mutas are morphing. At this point you're still harassing with mutas. You should be pumping either drones/lings or nothing at all depending on what build terran is doing. When lurker research is about half way done, pump some hydras according to how much gas you're gonna have. Usually about 7-9 i'd say. Send the first two hydras to the expo and morph them on the way, this is how you get the cool lurker egg line you see in replays. If you really want to be safe, get 2 hydras from your 3rd expo and and morph the lurkers in base. Burrow them above ramp maybe with some lings when they're done. Have the rest at your 2500 gas/4th expo. If terran isn't attacking any time soon, get two lurkers and burrow them at the other path that terran comes out to go directly to your main. That's your "weakside". If terran tries to come out of there later in the game, move your army immediately and try to engage him before he gets to your natural so you don't lose any drones or your extractor. At this point, if the terran is good and went 3 rax fact port, he should be coming out already to attack either your 4th or 3rd expo. React accordingly, build some lings if you have to, but usually don't need to since you're gonna have a lot of lurkers. If you fend off that force, you will be up by a lot.
note: I sometimes do this, but savior adds more mutas after lurker research is done. If your harass is going well and you're not in danger of getting attacked soon, add some more mutas to keep the harass going.
4. Mid-Game
Manage your larvas so you spend ALL of your gas, mostly on lurkers and some scourges. For the people that say "lings are awesome keke", or "theyre the best unit zvt by far !!11!!" They've obv never experienced the pleasure of having 14 lurkers vs 4 tanks. Build lings only when you don't have them, and use lurkers to do the damage. Flanking would be good but when you have so many lurkers, who cares what you do.
A little after your lurker research is done, add an evo and queens nest, I can't give you an exact time frame on this, but time it in reaction to terran and your economy. If your eco is dandy and in no danger, you can hive sooner. If terran is two factory rushing, get it sooner so you can get guards. If for some reason you didn't get your 3rd gas up in time, get it relatively later. But no matter what, you should have hive pretty early in the mid game process, or else you will get run over by a massing (tanks) terran.
If the terran is going 3 rax fact port, which is what most terrans do, and you anticipate he will go 2 ebay or 2 port, i would suggest making the transition to hydra/lurk. Upgrade hydras a little before hive is finished and stop making lings.
After hive is done, lay down a defiler mound, maybe a sunken in your main too. If you're switching to hydra/lurker, lay down another evo and upgrade range, if not, upgrade melee. With hydra/lurk + defiler + a good economy, you're golden no matter what the terran does. React accordingly, position your army intelligently and you should be on your way to a well deserved win.
5. Late Game Tips
Hmm, one of the most important things zergs often neglect is nydrus, get it as soon as your hive is done so you can protect your expos better. However ideally, you should be proctecting your expos with your main army, if you just let terran come out and get to to your 3rd expo, youre in a bad position to battle. Have two lurkers burrowed at each path the terran can come out at. Either have your army sitting at your 4th expo/2500 gas, or hotkey your units constantly and move around so terran doesn't know where you are. I recommend the latter but it really doesn't matter that much. Move your army so you're in a good position to battle always. Good terrans will reinforce their army constantly and will be attacking your main army with his main army so doesn't really matter that much where your troops are when he's not attacking.
Watch out for dropships, place ovies intelligently, scourge. Don't let a dropship catch you offguard.
Late game if you're lazy, slow, or both like me, you can play the tai-chi zerg. Which is turtling with defilers and a bigger army while trying to starve terran out by preventing a 3rd expo. Hydra/lurker/defiler is not hard to micro. Swarm, plague, plague the vessels. Plague is awesome. Plague his scvs for extra embarassment if you can. If you have 4 gases for a long time there's no reason why you should lose. But then again there are sooooooooooo many variants in zvt that it's hard to give set instructions past early midgame. So just react accordingly, don't fuck up your micro, keep good scouting, and you should be doing good. Good Luck!
PS: If you would like to see replays, or have any questions feel free to msg me on west and I will try to help out the best I can.
For terrans, you can either go for a micro timing build or macro timing build. Micro timing would be less units + constant pressure + come out sooner. 3 rax fact port is micro timing, You come out when zerg is weak, right when they're morphing their initial lurkers and use your micro and constant reinforcing to go pound for pound to push zerg back enough so you can do eco damage. Macro timing build would be a two fact rush. You come out before hive tech kicks in and go for the zerg main. Both builds require excellent timing and micro. But if you're the better player you should be able to kill zerg.
The best foreign macro timing, two factory terran is Daze, and the best micro timing terran is probably Idra or Sarens. So if you want to learn the two different ways to tvz watch their replays.
Side note: Unless you're 90% sure you can kill the expo hatch before lurkers, don't come out cuz most of the time you'll just waste those marines and die to muta/ling, muta/ling/sunkens, incoming lurkers, etc.
It's my standard ZvT build, but recently I've been trying really old school builds like 1-hat lair and 2-hat lair... which don't work too well in most cases :X But it's fun.
On November 17 2006 11:31 zulu_nation8 wrote: Late game if you're lazy, slow, or both like me, you can play the tai-chi zerg. Which is turtling with defilers and a bigger army while trying to starve terran out by preventing a 3rd expo.
Ahahaha i do the same thing on RH ZvT, good guide.
this is very very good. But recently, savior's muta timing is a bit different, and more intelligently timed judging by the actions of the terran. For example, against boxer's no barracks double in blitz, his muta timing was very late, his expo timing was very late (which he skipped a beat where boxer should have expo raided) and upgraded drop. It was so perfect execution, boxer couldn't do anything.
also savior uses guardians quite a bit with his mix, which I do too.
also the first sunken colony for me when i 12 hatch, if the position is close and not diagnal I tend to pretend i'm making 6 lings, and instead make 3 drones at 13 control and make a creep colony asap. there are far too many times the terran rushes in with good control and i have lost my lings and can't build the sunken in time
On November 17 2006 13:21 tKd_ wrote: also the first sunken colony for me when i 12 hatch, if the position is close and not diagnal I tend to pretend i'm making 6 lings, and instead make 3 drones at 13 control and make a creep colony asap. there are far too many times the terran rushes in with good control and i have lost my lings and can't build the sunken in time
on rush hour one sunken without lings isn't enough to keep terran from harassing with rines. You need at least 2 lings to scout early game
Awesome threads like this are popping up more common now! Thank God (or maybe Saro and Mani) for the Featured Threads! It makes people WANT to contribute. Good stuff zulu.
On November 17 2006 13:21 tKd_ wrote: also the first sunken colony for me when i 12 hatch, if the position is close and not diagnal I tend to pretend i'm making 6 lings, and instead make 3 drones at 13 control and make a creep colony asap. there are far too many times the terran rushes in with good control and i have lost my lings and can't build the sunken in time
on rush hour one sunken without lings isn't enough to keep terran from harassing with rines. You need at least 2 lings to scout early game
oh yes you're right of course, it's not like i don't make lings at all, but it doesn't have to be so soon, once again timing I guess, I'd rather wait at 13 to see if he's rushing and then make either 3 drones or 6 lings, or any of the combination than rather making a drone at 13 control, 14, 15. It's just the way I do it,
Like tKd_ said there is one other big difference in saviors game compared to most other pro zergs right now; and that's that he doesn't use muta harass to kill shit, but just to stall his opponent to build expand more. Yes, you say - they all do that. But savior gets like 9 mutalisks asap, and doesn't rely on the initial 7 to do the harassment. If he loses one (which he almost never does) he can still do the damage.
He can get more mutalisks faster than other zergs because of his early game greed, but of course he still knows when he must build more lings and sunkens which us mortals do not.
The 9 mutas as opposed to 7 allows him to stall the terran force from moving out a longer time since he could if he so wanted add some lings and hump the first ball of death terran moves out with. Hence they must focus on defence longer and build up allowing him to get 1 or 2 expansions down and secured. From then on, as we've often seen, it's downhill for the terran.
If he hasn't lost many mutalisks, he likes very much to go guardians, and thus can get a ridiculous amount of them timed to when the terrans has enough to kill the zerg land army.
Plus, he's one of the most wicked darkswarm users I've seen (great example in a practice game where he played around with lings and very few ultras plus swarm against a much much bigger army terran, stalling the game for an extra 15 minutes even though he should be dead. The terran was unable to go for the kill, but had to block constantly.).
Oh, and he makes sure that he has some hydras between his defilers and vessels apart from scourges so taht the terran can't just fly in and irradiate them all. Great example against oov at RoV. That game comes to a conclusion where he makes a continous push all across the middle and runs to oovs expansions with a shitload of swarms that plastered most of the center. It was just ridiculous.
Edit: Forgot, to say - very good explanation of the build zulu!
Luhh the fuck you talkin about? All zergs build 9 and use them for stalling rather than killing. July sometimes goes for 10 or 11. The other vital function of mutas is to prevent drops(or to go defend against one so you don't have to pull your entire lurkling force back), very important to keep at least 6 of 9 mutalisks up for the later stages of the game.
and yea no one gets 7 mutalisks, 7 is the minimum cuz 7 kills a scv in one hit. If you look at his fpvods vs oov on rh3, he doesn't micro at all. When oov came he just attacked him with pure lurkers -_-. oov I don't know why, thought a good counter would be to send 3 firebats to the 3rd expo to kill it, they were able waste about half of the hatchery's blood before all dying to mutas.
On November 17 2006 15:40 Drowsy wrote: Luhh the fuck you talkin about? All zergs build 9 and use them for stalling rather than killing. July sometimes goes for 10 or 11. The other vital function of mutas is to prevent drops(or to go defend against one so you don't have to pull your entire lurkling force back), very important to keep at least 6 of 9 mutalisks up for the later stages of the game.
I read my post and it's kind of messy. The point was on maps which allowed it, he went double exp instead of single exp after 9 mutas and had enough money. Thus it's superfucking critical for him to keep the terran in the base.
I've never seen July do that. July likes to fly around and kill things and adds more units earlier. He doesn't use the necessary minimum as efficiently, and instead wants to kill more terran stuff. Savior gameplan is to get swarm from 4 gas, July's gameplan often seems to be a hope of killing the terran army still on lairtech, since he doesn't have the same amount of gas from an overall more starved game.
About the 7 vs 9. yeah my bad. Confused myself there.
biggest difference between july and savior is july uses more zerglings and less lurkers so he doesn't need as much gas. Hive timing is still the same in most cases. Hiving is not a style, it's a necessity in zvt to counter a lot of things.
this guide is good, but it helps terran player more than zerg player imo. most decent zvt ers either have a style or have learned savior zvt it's the standard, the strat jesus zerg created to balance zvt
Imo gaurdians are a very important part of this build. If the terran were tank heavy they do a great job pushing him back into his natural. And as most of us know, swarm in his natural is as close as u can get to a gg.
Haha I have been copying this build a long time also. First time I noticed it, was savior using this build on r-point. It was like magic which just shut down everything the terran was doing.
On November 18 2006 05:25 Pistasj wrote: Haha I have been copying this build a long time also. First time I noticed it, was savior using this build on r-point. It was like magic which just shut down everything the terran was doing.
yea first time i saw this was savior vs nada on luna for MSL something ...totally owned nada with hydralurk + swarm =. =
i was like SHIT who the hell is this zerg that just came from nowhere and raped nada
I know savior did not invent 3 hatch muta. He modified it with little changes to counter terran fast expo. The replay you guys all have of nada vs savior on luna was a completely different build. People used to 3 hatch muta and get lurkers sooner or later and expo later or 4th hatch in base, etc, etc and not pushing the limits of the build. Savior modified it so it's a perfect now. The zvp savior thread has nothing to do with this, everyone knows he didn't invent zerg turtling. Savior is the first zerg to place so much emphasis on gas, more so than july/yellow/chojja, anyone that came before him.
uhh 3 hat muta has been done for so long. Zergman uses it to. Also u should make the 3rd hat at 13/14 dont make lings yet cuz the faster u get ur 3 hat up the more drones ull have. Also try to place ur 3rd hat in a weird place away from your mainhat(but still in ur main base) so that you can hide your tech from scan. also, I recommend making 3 drones and getting a creep instead of 6 lings because again, u get more drones. Another note is while muta harrassing u should upgrade armor along with lurkers, thats wut savior did vs sea on tau cross.
3 hatch muta has been done for very very very long actually, I've seen reps of nal_gundal do it, zergman, paul, this was very long time ago. Additionally, savior's 3 hatch muta hasn't really been all that effective in the old old reps I've seen especially because the overlord w/ muta trick wasn't used back then. I think its just his double expo and his drone timing and his micro and unit choice that owned. It's just that 2 hatch was far more popular on maps where 3 hatch isn't necessary. for example, i had a ton of nal_gundal reps on LT, and he did 3 hatch every time in 12 o clock because it was necessary and he was one that made like 7 sunkens lol or more.
I do 16 and so does midian so that's why you should probably do 16.
Lol? Don't give us an explanation, just "I do this; that's why you should do it."
Otherwise, it was a good and accurate guide. I disagree with the Zergling Speed timing and with the amount of Zerglings that were made before Mutalisks; Keeping in mind however different styles have different builds.
I do 16 and so does midian so that's why you should probably do 16.
Lol? Don't give us an explanation, just "I do this; that's why you should do it."
Otherwise, it was a good and accurate guide. I disagree with the Zergling Speed timing and with the amount of Zerglings that were made before Mutalisks; Keeping in mind however different styles have different builds.
16 is the best because it allows the least amount of larvas be idle before they're used. 17 is eh and 18 is too late although I think you do get more minerals or something because i've seen nal_keke do it in replays. About the zergling speed, if you get it later than you won't have it when terran comes out after fast expo. If you get it at 100 gas after lair you won't be cutting any drones as you should be able to use all your larvas unless you were forced to make extra sunkens earlier than usual for some reason.
On November 23 2006 11:43 zulu_nation8 wrote: If you still think this build has been done for ages and ages, name another zerg that has been doing it.
Myself.
yea but not at the same timing, look at your games from 2-3 months ago, you get gas later, etc.
Ive always gotten gas at 15/18
But like whatever, what i remember is that time ago, like a year or more, i got the 3 hatch build from yellow, but i was pretty new back then so i couldnt really work out that build, so i kinda modified it a bit, and thats the way i have been doing it since then.
EPT
